Valhalla
by MissAnnThropic
Summary: I was ready to die with you, but I’m not ready to live without you.


Title: Valhalla  
Author: MissAnnThropic  
Spoilers: Requiem  
Summary: I was ready to die with you, but I'm not ready to live without you.  
Disclaimer: I own nasing! Really, I don't. All you see here (that you recognize, anyway) is the creation of someone else. I take no credit.

* * *

They found you today.

Up until the minute I got the call, I still expected you to just show up, unharmed, as paranoid and haunted as ever but at least okay... at least alive. I've never known anyone as resilient as you... you've been through so much and you still have room to love. You loved me, I know that. I loved you too... I only regret now that I never had the courage to tell you.

But you weren't supposed to die! You, of all people, were supposed to be okay. You've lived through a hundred things that would have killed a lesser man. I guess I expected this to be number one hundred and one.

But they called me today and said your body had been found. I don't remember almost the entire hour after the call, but at some point Skinner came to pick me up. He's such a good hearted man, Mulder... he knew that, even if you were gone, I had to see you. Maybe I've become more like you than I'd ever thought before... today it was more like you than I ever wanted to be. Devastated as I was, I wanted to touch your cold skin... because if I didn't touch it and see it myself, I'd never give up hope that you were coming home someday.

When I was led into the morgue at Bethesda General, you were lying there so quietly... a part of me soared with hope that you were just sleeping. A part of me still wishes you'd opened your eyes and smiled at me... an even smaller part of me will always wonder if you would have had I only stayed a moment longer. Wouldn't you be proud of me? I believed, and something in me always will, that that day, you weren't gone... that everyone else... the world, had been wrong.

I've faced death before, but this was different... I don't think I'm ever going to accept losing you, Mulder. Now that I have the memory of looking down at your still form, I'll forever wait, in that memory, for you to open your eyes and look at me.

I touched your skin, your kind face, and the chill of your flesh floored me. A thousand bodies I've touched that were just as cold, but it was you, and it broke me. Maybe I hoped that the heat of my tears could get you to open your eyes. I probably would have believed in anything right then, because I'd never been more ready to accept a miracle if you would just wake up. Wake up for me, Mulder... I'm ready to believe it all... just open your eyes for me.

I had trouble accepting that you were gone, but I did know instinctively that something was wrong... you were missing something... something was gone that had been there a thousand times before that I never noticed when I had the chance. I've had that sick feeling before, when I was a little girl. This is the first time in twenty years I've felt it again. Someone stole something from you, Mulder... and whatever it was that was taken, and wherever it was now... I wanted nothing more in that moment than to be there too.

You weren't supposed to die! Not like this... I know it, because I've always known that when you did, I'd be there. Probably dying with you... and I was ready for that. I was even relieved, to know I wouldn't have to figure out how to live my life after you. You were supposed to wait for me! We should have gone together, damn you! I was ready to die with you, but I'm not ready to live without you. What am I supposed to do now? You were my touchstone, and now you're gone... I've never been so lost, Mulder.

I hope you weren't so lost when you went... I can't imagine us both having to die feeling like this. Maybe you were thinking of me at the time, and I hope I brought you comfort in memory if not in presence. If I could have been there... if I was only with you... I should never have let you go.

We were supposed to be together, Mulder... I was supposed to die with you. We're partners, together, a team... not like this. I'm half of something bigger, and until I pass on too I'm probably always going to be a fraction of what I was.

You left me to live like this, to expect me to be okay. Well, you know what Mulder? I'm not 'fine'... are you turning in your grave to hear that? I'm not 'fine' this time... and I never will be again.

I just miss you.

I've lost that glimmer of hope keeping me going while you were missing that you were going to turn up fine... that you would get to come home. I don't know what to do now... I don't know where I'll get the courage or strength to go on when the hope of finding you was taken from me. And the part I think that hurts the most is that, if you had come home again, things would have been so much like before you left. I'd like to believe this time it would have been different, but I know I'd just be lying to myself. I would still have been too coward to tell you that I love you... love you so much. I'd have expected you to pull number one hundred and two out of your hat, and I'd never have to say it... because you weren't supposed to die.

I guess I never thought you would really die... at least not for a long time. I never realized how little time I had to let you love me like you wanted to. I know you wanted to, and part of me wanted you to too, but I was too afraid to let you. I never deserved your heart, Mulder... you were so much the brave and strong knight... I was the frightened girl in the corner trying to understand the love you were always ready to give me as soon as I moved out of my corner to let you.

But you let me love you in my own way... not the way either of us would have wanted it, but the memory of that is all I have. I wish I could tell you how much I'm grateful for that. You let it be on my terms, let it be my kind of love, when you were capable of so much more. I was afraid of your passion... I always knew deep down that if I gave in and let you love me (and god forbid love you back) the way your heart told you to, it would have engulfed me. What I wouldn't give now to throw those cautions to the wind and be swallowed by everything your proud heart was capable of giving. I'm so sorry it took me this long to realize that being helpless is okay... I would have been safe with you. I know that. For all the physical dangers our work entailed, my heart would have been safe with you.

I wish I'd told you how much I love you... I know how much you would have held on to that... how often in the past you needed it but I'd been too afraid to give it to you. I can never describe how much you deserved to know... I'm so sorry it took me this long to figure that out. I'm not afraid anymore... but it's all a breath too late.

Please forgive me.

I wasn't everything you needed me to be, while you were all I could need and more. If you were only here with me... I'd be whatever you wanted me to be. Your angel, your warrior, your heart, your forever... I understand now what I am doesn't matter outside of you. For the first time I understand abandoning oneself to another... you held me in the palm of your hand long ago, but neither of us realized it. Or maybe you did... you always felt responsible for anything that happened to me, was it because you felt I was slipping through your fingers?

You would have protected me... I have no doubt of that. I know that, all those years with you, I was safe. I had you at my back, and while I knew that in a professional and cursory way even then, I know now you had me covered in ways I could not imagine. I was able to stand down all those dark demons and lies in our lives because you were there with me.

After I left your shell in the morgue, I came here... our bench. It's freezing outside, but I don't really notice it. The moonlight's dancing on the water of the Washington Memorial like a lost zephyr... one so lost as I. A single being of wind and light trapped in this darkness, shivering and weeping for the loss of the light and warmth.

I just remembered something... and for the life of me I'm not sure why it came to me now, but it suits you, Mulder. It's from Norse mythology, stuff I learned what seems like ages ago in school.

The Norse believed that the Valkyries came down from the skies and took home fallen warriors... maybe if I listen carefully tonight I'll hear the horses coming.

END


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